


Cross My Heart and Hope to Die

by smellslikecitrus



Series: Heart & Souls [1]
Category: Heart and Souls (1993), Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Death, Emotional Constipation, Emotional Trauma, F/M, Falling In Love, Fluff, Guardian Angels, Howard Stark’s A+ Parenting, Imaginary Friends, Julia/Milo and Harrison/Penny if you squint, Kid Fic, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, Robert Downey Jr - Freeform, Therapy, Tony Growing Up, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, and souls, ghost fic, kid!Tony, redemption arc
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-19
Updated: 2018-03-15
Packaged: 2019-03-21 09:15:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13737756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smellslikecitrus/pseuds/smellslikecitrus
Summary: Proof that Tony Stark has a heart... and souls.AKA the four lost souls who served as the guardian angels that shaped Anthony Stark’s childhood return to finish what they started. And perhaps, in the process, they’ll change Tony’s life for the better, too.





	1. The Bus

**Author's Note:**

> Hi!  
> So my friend and I co-wrote this, but she’s not on ao3 and I can’t add her (yet).  
> This is the result of our collective obsession with Robert Downey Jr and all of his movies.  
> It will be long, but totally worth it. 
> 
> She’d like to tell you she’s poured her heart and soul into these two movies, so this crossover means a lot to us and hopefully will to you, too. 
> 
> -smellslikecitrus
> 
> (Funny story, this is the friend with whom I came up with the inside joke that became my username [and everything comes full circle])

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It may be confusing, but: first (and kinda second) chapters are backstory, plot taken from Heart and Souls. Then it gets into the Iron Man/Avengers movies later.

The blood practically bouncing in his veins, his hands grip the wheel so tightly they’ve gone numb. The rain falls in gentle torrents when the car pulls into the driveway and Howard Stark steps out into the downpour, boyish excitement and raindrops blurring his vision. Normally he might be conscientious of the longevity of his trim suit, or the water damage to his expensive shoes, but now he hardly notices the puddles he steps in as he rushes to the house.

He can’t open the front door fast enough. “Maria!” He yells her name before he’s even completely out of the rain. His wife is reclining stiffly on the leather couch, face strained, eyes twinkling. Her hands rest on her pregnant stomach. “Are we having a baby?”

“No,” she wheezes through a smile. “We’ve still got some time.”

The soles of Howard’s shoes squish across the expensive carpet as he rushes to Maria, kissing her quickly and placing a hand on top of hers.

“I’m so proud of us, honey,” he mutters, out of breath with elation. He can’t stop grinning.

Maria cries out at a contraction. “Howard!”

“Okay, okay! Let’s get to the car!”

One hand wrapped around her back and the other tightly holding her hand, Howard rushes Maria out of the house, into the rain, and back into the vehicle. He backs hastily out of the drive and speeds through the dreary rainstorm, beaming.

✯✯✯

Harrison glances at his watch. Fifteen minutes. _Yeesh._

The last audition had been six minutes ago now, which means they’re running ahead. Which means it will be Harrison’s turn sooner than he is ready for. Glancing about the empty lobby, he hums a scale again from the bottom of his throat.

He knows he’s good. He _knows_ it. So why can’t he just do one measly audition?

He opens his mouth to sing the scales aloud again, a mental checklist of the desired protocol scrolling across his mind’s eye in a frantic loop. _Enter with confidence. Slate yourself. Project. Smile at the directors. Shake the pianist’s hand. Give the pianist the tempo. Take your time to get into character. Nod when you’re ready to start. Say thank you and walk out smiling._

His voice echoes in the expansive chamber. It almost sounds good. With each note, Harrison gains a little more confidence. _Open the throat. Aim for the teeth. Breathe from the gut. Relax into the vibrato. Don’t tense up the face._

At the top of the scale, Harrison turns and halts suddenly as another man walks into the lobby. The man holds a binder and is dripping from the rain. He nods warmly to Harrison upon eye contact.

Self-conscious again, Harrison stops singing. Immediately, his palms get clammy, and he feels butterflies in every cavity of his torso. He flips through his own binder quickly, deliriously reviewing his sheet music, having spontaneously forgotten all his lyrics.

A door opens and shuts. The woman assistant, responsible for transferring the actors into the auditioning room, appears with a pad of paper and an incredulous stare.

“Mr. Harrison Winslow? You’re next.”

 _Shit._ “Uh, I don’t. I-” He grins in desperation. “If this gentleman would like to go first, I could use, uh, a moment.” He feels sweat gathering on the back of his neck already as he glances to the man. “Would you like to…”

“Yes, thank you,” he smiles.

“My pleasure,” Harrison responds, overcome with a fleeting rush of absolute relief. His eyes follow the man as he crosses the lobby and disappears into the next room, the lady shutting the door ominously behind him. Harrison smacks his binder to his brow and coughs weakly. Suddenly his throat is very dry.

✯✯✯

“ _Billy!_ ”

Penny stands on her stoop with her hands on her hips, surveying for her boy amongst the crowd of neighborhood kids playing an elaborate game of make-believe on the front walk. “Where is your brother? Come in the house. Inside. Where is your brother?” She waves her arm sternly as her children approach her, herding them up the stairs. 

“Mom, it’s not late.” Whining, her girls tramp up the steps, reluctantly obeying their mother. 

“Brush your teeth,” Penny commands, calmly ignoring them. “Yes, in the kitchen there. Get your butt in.” She lightly pats her daughter’s behind before turning around, frowning. “Billy!” She claps her hands, perhaps hoping he would materialize out of thin air like a gas station magic trick. “Mia, go home. _Billy!_ ”

“Here he is, Penny. We’re just feeding these here pussycats.” Agnes, her eccentric and amiable elderly neighbor says, followed by her usual sea of swarming stray felines. She puts down a mewling tabby in front of a food bowl. Billy comes up beside her and nods his head assertively.

“We were just feeding these here pussycats, Mama,” he repeats, and Penny feels a warm feeling bubble up inside her, one that erases the worry she had over Billy’s disappearance and the annoyance she felt at his spontaneity. She feels the loving warmth grow as she swats playfully at Billy, who is still holding a cat.

“You and these here pussycats keep your mama itchin’. Come on, I gotta go to work.”

Penny looks to Agnes once her kids are inside and finally obeying, the older woman already nodding with a loving glow in her eye. “I’ll be in to look after them,” she assures.

“Agnes, thanks for looking out for him.”

“That’s my lover boy, that one is,” Agnes shakes her head with a fond smile.

“You know, you’re spoiling my kids rotten,” Penny scolds, but her grin and the shake of her head signify to her older neighbor just how much she loves it.

“Mm-hm.”

“And them cats,” Penny gestures at a cat at Agnes’ feet and Agnes scoffs.

“Oh, shush about my cats!” She scoops the cat into her arms and scurries back into her apartment with glee, the army of kitties following her eagerly. Penny watches her go with a wide smile and and chuckles softly as she walks through her own door.  


✯✯✯

Her hands full with a tray of dishes from another table, Julia rushes across the restaurant kitchen, careful not to step in wet spots or jostle into a coworker. She mutters the order she just received under her breath over and over, determined to do her job as cheerily and efficiently as possible. _Vegetarian black bean soup. Grilled cheese, side of fries. BLT, hold the mayo, wheat bun._

After delivering the order to the cook and setting the dirties by the sink, she fills up two drinks and rushes back into the comedy club. Backing out through the swinging doors, passing the bar crammed with an entire beefy, inebriated hockey team, and barely catching the end of a joke the night’s featured stand-up comic blurts from the stage, she drops off the beers at a table of regulars.

“Thanks, Julia,” says one of the men, who has what she’s grown to recognize as _the look_ in his eye. He pinches her cheek cordially. “My, you look just stunning tonight.”

“You’re such a flirt,” she scolds him good-naturedly. But that reminds her -- through the clattering din of the busy restaurant and the dim lighting and the aroma of steak -- that she’s waiting on a certain flirt, herself.

“ _Julia!_ ” On cue, he shouts her name. She turns around to see his tall, grinning figure clambering through the venue to reach her. “I’ve been looking all over for you.”

“John, not _here!_ ” She exclaims, embarrassment rushing over her skin.

“Well, I think right here’s just fine,” John spouts, a little too loudly. The comedian pauses his act and turns to them.

“How ‘bout up here? I’m almost done.” The crowd laughs loudly and Julia sighs in horrified annoyance, pulling John out of the room.

“So?” John says before they’re even in the privacy of the alleyway.

“So?”

“So.”

“ _So?_ ”

John glares. “Well, you’ve been up here for five months now.”

Julia scoffs at him and leans against the wall, her back against a tearing poster promoting another worn-down not-funny stand-up artist. “Five months is not so long.”

“It _is_ , Julia, when you’re waiting for somebody.” John’s eyes twinkle as they take her in. “You know, everyone thinks I’m crazy for letting you do this-”

“ _Letting_ me do this?”

“Alright, alright, I’m sorry.” John concedes and Julia scoffs, shaking her head and giving him a long, thoughtful look.

“John, I still have to be sure. I never lived in a city before,” she says. “I don’t want to end up like my mother. She never went anywhere and she never did anything.”

“Julia, you’re not going to end up like your mom,” John chuckles, making the statement sound like a ridiculous thing. His laugh is contagious, and Julia smiles too. Pausing, John shakes his head. “Julia, you know, when you’re not around me, I don’t care about anything. There doesn’t seem to be a reason to do anything at all.”

Julia looks away from him, smiling, her buoyant energy feeling denser with each word he speaks.

“Anyway…” John begins a new thought. “What I really came here to tell you is that I made a deal with the bank. I got the loan.”

Julia gasps, her gut leaping like she’s been given a shot of steroids. “You bought the Granger place?”

“Yes!” Both laughing with excitement, John pulls her into a hug and she squeezes him tightly. “And 75 acres that goes across the road.” Julia pulls away, looking back up into his searching eyes. “300 acres, Julia, and it’s all ours.”

But the joy quickly rinses from her veins and Julia bites her lip and looks down. She knows it’s coming, and she knows she’s hidden from it for too long now -- procrastinated, rabbitted around it, flaked, see-sawed. It’s coming: the question.

“Look, maybe I’m just making a fool of myself here, but…” John sighs, frustration folding itself over his face. “I love you. And I always have. It just seems to me that I deserve an answer. Yes or no?”

“Oh, John, it’s just that I-” Julia halts, the love in her heart replaced with a gnawing anxiety. “ _Please_ , if you love me, can’t you wait just a little while longer-”

“ _No_ , Julia. I’ve waited. I’ve waited for years!” He’s angry now, and Julia flinches, and she notices the tears that are in his eyes. “And I guess I got my answer.”

He turns and rushes around the corner. She nearly follows him before remembering the tables of hungry customers she’s currently responsible for and stops herself. Swallowing around the painful lump in her throat and ignoring the erratic beating of her heart, she retreats, defeated, back into the restaurant.

✯✯✯

The street is empty and the dark neighborhood silent. All Milo can hear is the damp echoing of his footsteps on the freshly wet pavement and his own half-hearted singing.

“ _I’m just a lonely boy… lonely and blue… I’m all alone… with nothing to do._ ”

He keeps muttering lyrics, eyes alert, scanning the street, raising his cigarette to his mouth and taking a drag of smoke. He hums to keep his mind off his guilt. Yes, what he’s doing right now should be eliminating his guilt anyway, but the sick feeling in his gut doesn’t go away the longer he thinks about the crime he’s committed.

But this will be the last break-in. The last crime. And this time, he’s on the right team.

Not much more than a stub now, he flicks the cigarette butt to the ground and stops walking. He’s reached his destination. Glancing at the ivy-covered brick wall guarding the wealthy manor, he exhales, steels himself, and whips out his flashlight. He enters the front yard casually, approaches the front door, and picks the lock with ease. In and out, piece of cake. _I’m a professional._

Welcomed by darkness, Milo flicks on the flashlight and nimbly, silently, navigates through the house. Sofa. End table. Lacy curtains. Mantlepiece. He opens drawers, rifles through folders, and looks under a cushion.

_Where is that confounded pack of cards?_

✯✯✯

The clatter of dishes and the depressing muck of customers welcome Julia back into the building.

“Julia, table fifty-three, come on.” Listless, the bartender snaps at her, not pleased by her impromptu break.

“Oh, sorry,” Julia takes the proffered tray and holds it high before stopping in her tracks, another waitress lounging on the bar near her, waiting eagerly to hear her update.

“Well?” Wanda prompts, hungry for details, always the first one to pounce on the gossip. She is the type who deals secrets like others deal crack cocaine.

“Well, he left. He’s really mad,” Julia explains. She doesn’t say why, but it seems news, or at least rumors, of the impending engagement have already infiltrated her workplace.

“Don’t worry, honey,” Wanda placates. “A man drives all the way from Vacaville just to see you, he’s _hooked_. You can reel him in anytime you want.”

Julia’s face slowly flushes as she mulls this over. John is not a fish wiggling on the end of a fisherman’s line. Julia had beat around the bush for far too long. John is a person with real feelings and real intentions, and he wasn’t going to keep taking her bait forever!

“Oh, Wanda, you’re so full of it,” Julia spits, not fully absorbing the small gasp that escaped Wanda’s mouth. “I love him. I’m gonna lose him unless I do something right now!”

Abandoning her tray with the gaping Wanda at the bar, Julia takes off running for the back door. The wet pavement flies beneath her as her feet barely touch the ground, running for the bus stop. She’s just yards away when the doors begin to close and the bus engine comes alive.

“No! _Waitwaitwaitwait!_ ” Banging on the side of the bus, it thankfully screeches to a halt as soon as it starts. Julia catches her breath as the door folds open and she hops up the steps. Quickly, she stuffs a quarter in the slot and moves back into the otherwise empty vehicle, plopping down in a seat with a big smile on her face. _She loves him._

✯✯✯

“Didn’t you audition for the chorus last year?”

So the audition assistant woman remembers him. Fantastic. How much more embarrassing could this get? Harrison nods in response and tries to say yes, but it instead comes out as a sort of guttural croak. He clears his throat, wishing desperately for a glass of water. He follows the woman across the barren stage, towards the grand piano and foreboding microphone set up dead center. He tries to distract himself by looking at the beautiful carvings on the theatre ceiling.

“And you’re with the library!”

 _Great, now she recognizes me from everyday life too?_ “Uh, y-yes, that’s right.” Harrison chokes on air and coughs weakly.

“And, uh, where have you sung before?”

Harrison’s pulse reaches an all-time high. He suddenly remembers why he stopped auditioning -- considering his blood pressure, it’s rather hazardous to his health. “Uh, I, um, haven’t ever really sung professionally.”

“Oh.” He can’t tell if this is a good or bad remark from the woman. She smiles at him. “Well, good luck!”

_You’re supposed to say ‘break a leg’._

“Harrison Winslow. He’s our last one,” the woman announces into the audience, where the production’s director has a paper-strewn table set up in the empty theatre’s seats. She then exits, leaving Harrison stranded, parched, and rather wobbly in the knees.

“What did you sing for us last year?” The man asks, looking at the resume Harrison turned in earlier.

Harrison is hit by a burning desire to jump off the stage and into a bottomless black hole. “Uh... I -- I didn’t actually sing, I was…” he swallows hard. “I was taken ill.” 

The director nods. “Let’s get on with it.”

“Yeah.” His trachea feels like sandpaper and he clears his throat loudly. He feels that abyss just waiting to pull him down.

Too soon, the pianist begins playing the song. Harrison is taken off-guard, trying to count the measures before his pickup, trying to get saliva into his mouth, staring into the vast galaxy of empty velvet seats before him and feeling very, very trapped. Suddenly, he realizes he’s long since missed his entrance. He glances at the pianist, who stares at him intently while his playing trails off into awkward silence.

Harrison coughs violently, covering up, shielding his face from the director. He can’t tell if the blood has rushed to his head or if the blood is drained from it, but the only thing he is certain of is he’s never been this horrified before. “Excuse me,” he says. _Pitiful._ He nods to the pianist, who begins the song a second time.

The world seems to spin around Harrison like some kind of twisted amusement park ride. He can’t breathe or think. The gap between him and the director seems to lengthen and grow into a football field until he feels he’s standing at the center of the Roman colosseum, just begging to be devoured by the lions.

The pianist stops. Harrison blinks, feeling his heart break. The director leans forward in his chair, intrigued.

“I’m sorry,” Harrison says weakly, somehow managing a smile. He shakes his head. “I can’t.”

He nods to the director. He nods to the pianist. He mouths an apology. He excuses himself and walks off the stage with legs like dead weights.

✯✯✯

“...I’m not gonna be your friend anymore!” Billy spouts, a large grin on his face as his mother chases him into bed.

“Well, that’s just fine. Night-night. Sleep tight. Your mama has got to go to work tonight.” Penny tucks Billy in next to his sisters, the boy’s reluctance to go to sleep failing to trump the exhaustion in the little boy’s veins from his busy day.

“Why do you always have to work in the nighttime?” Billy complains softly, and Penny’s mouth tightens the tiniest bit, the reminder of her husband’s absence painful, even after all these years. She tilts her head to look into her youngest’s eyes and tuts.

“Because I’m on the night switchboard. I’m sorry, sweetie. I’m trying to get back on days. But now, until then, you know Agnes is lookin’ in on you, so… No worries!”

Penny pulls away from her kids and reaches for the light, but Billy sits up in bed, his sisters groaning as the covers are pulled away. “Hug-a-bug, Mr. Hug-a-bug!”

She could never say no to him. Turning back to Billy’s grabby hands, she agrees, “Hurry, hurry, hurry, come on.”

Billy squeals with excitement, “Hugabug, Mr. Hugabug!”

“Yeah, yeah.” She sits on the edge of the bed and starts to sing, punctuating each lyric with a giant squeeze of the giggling Billy. “ _Mr. Hug-a-bug, Hug-a-bug, Hug-a-bug Bear. If you try to find him, well, he won’t be there…_ ” Her satiny voice has a calming effect, and Billy smiles happily. She runs a hand through his dark curls. “ _But if you’re feelin’ blue and a little bit scared, he’ll be right beside you: Mr. Hug-a-bug Bear._ ”

She finishes with an embrace, squeezing Billy against her tight and tucking him in again. Standing, she blows kisses to her children. “Night-night, angel faces.”

“Good night, Mom,” they respond in chorus, watching their mother cross the room.

“No worries,” she reminds them with an adoring smile, and shuts their door.

After adorning her nice purple dress and slipping on her silver heels, Penny leaves her apartment, taking one last grateful look at Agnes, who strokes a gray cat contentedly. Penny finds her way to the bus stop and catches the next ride just in time, slipping in her quarter and moving into the seats. In the company of just one other woman, Penny sits down and stares out the rain-streaked window, watching her neighborhood disappear.

✯✯✯

Finally: the jackpot.

Milo couldn’t find the cards on the bottom floor, so he’d had to sneak upstairs. He creeps into the bedroom and after rooting through several desk drawers, he finds them: the trading cards, neatly wrapped in their original packaging. He has just picked up the pack when he hears a door swing open, and his blood runs cold. 

Milo spins around with his heart in his throat, his flashlight beam landing squarely on the last face in the world he currently wants to see.

“Hey, Mr. Marco!” Milo exclaims cheerfully, gulping and trying to smile innocently. The cards in his hand seem to burn into his palm like a branding iron. “How was dinner?”

“Dinner was great, Milo,” the gang leader responds, staring coldly at him. Milo nods enthusiastically while the panic begins to race into his extremities. Slowly, Marco takes a step towards him. “You lousy, double-crossing son of a bitch.”

Milo sets his jaw and holds up the cards. “Wish I’d never swiped these.”

Marco narrows his eyes, still approaching him. “You got paid.”

“You want your fifty bucks back?” Milo rummages through his pocket and slaps some bills onto the desk. “Here. What do you care? You got plenty of cards and stamps and merchandise, now let me give these back. Okay?”

“ _Put ‘em down!_ ”

“Tell you what,” Milo begins, his grip on the flashlight tightening. “I’m just gonna walk outta here, and that way nobody has to get hurt -- if you catch my drift.”

Immediately, Marco snatches a fire poker from the nearby rack and Milo ducks just in time before it swings down hard on the desk next to him. He punches back and catches Marco’s arm with his fist, but the poker socks him in the side. Doubled over, Milo takes a deep breath.

“Okay…” he mutters. As Marco approaches him, Milo swings at him again, but this time gets whacked in the temple. In the process, he drops the trading cards on the floor. 

“ _Ow!_ Oh, ow.” He stumbles to the windowsill and, though he isn’t much more than bruised, makes a show of remaining hunched and staggering. He touches his temple and winces when he feels a shallow, bloody cut there, then holds up a hand in surrender. “Okay, okay. You’ve made your point.”

“Oh, that wasn’t my point,” Marco sneers sadistically, raising the poker above his head. “ _This_ is my point!”

But before he can cream Milo upside the skull with it, Milo launches a heavy vase at Marco’s face -- which stalls him long enough for Milo to yank open the window and clamber out onto the narrow sill.

“ _Hey!_ ” He hears Marco behind him as he glances down at the stunning height of the ledge he’s on and hastily begins crawling further along the wall. “Where do you think you’re going now, smart guy? Long way down! Ya got wings?”

Milo carefully rises to his feet and scurries around the corner of the building, scooting precariously along as he looks down at the shrubberies far below.

“ _I see you again, you’re a dead man, ya hear me? A_ dead _man!_ ”

The neighboring house has only one story, and the roof is close enough for him to jump. His pulse drowning out his fears, Milo exhales, quickly crosses himself, and leaps.

✯✯✯

Sitting at the bus stop, Harrison feels like an absolute disgrace. The terrifying events of the last thirty minutes were so traumatizing he can hardly remember what happened. From when he inched onto the stage to when he trudged out the door, the stupid things he said and the sights and sounds of the theatre have absorbed themselves into one big mortified blob. All that’s left is the heavy rhythm of his heart and the sickly ache in his soul.

He watches a car pass nonchalantly. _Maybe next year._

The bus pulls to a stop in front of him. He pays his fare, deliberately avoiding making any eye contact with the bus driver. He finds a seat in the back, feeling heat rush to his face when he passes the two women in the bus. Even though they weren’t at his audition, have no idea he just auditioned, he can’t help the feeling of absolute shame accompanying the sight of another human being at the moment. He plops down on a chair and rubs a hand over his face, wanting to disappear.

✯✯✯

Buildings fly past as Howard’s Buick races down the boulevard. Panting, shaking, and sweating profusely, Maria lets out another anguished scream.

“ _AH!_ There’s another one!”

“Uh. Um, okay,” Howard stammers for the umpteenth time, looking back and forth between his laboring wife and the street ahead of him. He longs to help her, is terrified by the fact she’s about to give birth, but knows he has to keep his focus on the road. “Just… just hang on-”

“The baby’s coming!” Maria declares. “It’s coming _now!_ ”

Howard swallows his hysteria and fastens his fingers to the wheel. “Okay, just hold on, we’ll get there soon.”

✯✯✯

Raging with self-hate, Milo pushes out of the neighbor’s brush and finds himself safe on the sidewalk again. Hiking up his jeans and straightening his leather jacket, he starts to hurry off down the street when he hears _the kid_ call out to him.

“Hey! Did you get ‘em? Did you get my cards?”

Milo turns around, sighing in exasperation at the sight of him: a chumpy little boy with thick glasses and squishy cheeks, walking his bicycle towards Milo with twinkling beady eyes. His hopeful expression stabs Milo in the gut, and he gets angry.

“Geez, kid, what are you doing here? I told you I’d _let you know._ ”

The boy looks down and frowns. His round face twists with heartbreak and Milo shakes his head.

“Look, squirt, whaddaya want from me, okay?” Still breathing hard, Milo glares at the little kid, who stares back unwavering. “The guy, he pulls a .38, alright? I’m dodgin’ bullets, I’m lucky to get out alive-”

“Why’d you take ‘em, anyway?” The boy wails, his face crumpling into itself. “My grandpa gave me those!”

Milo blinks rapidly, fighting a lump of disgrace down his throat. “Look, kid. Life’s tough, alright?” He’s almost yelling. “Lotsa times you don’t get what you want. _Mostly_ you don’t get what you want!”

“Yeah?” The boy challenges him, raising his chin. “Well, you stink, mister!” Swinging a leg over his bike and beginning to pedal away, the boy shrieks back at him over his shoulder. “You _stink!_ ”

Milo glowers at his shoes, seething, while the kid vanishes. Hearing an oncoming bus, he grunts in frustration and pounds his fist against the trunk of a parked car before marching into the street. Pausing in the middle of the road, he turns towards the bus and holds his arms out like a traffic director.

“ _Stop!_ ” he bellows, and the bus screeches to a bouncy halt.

“Hey pal, wait at the bus stop,” the bus driver gripes as Milo angrily storms up the steps.

“Well, why don’t you take me to a bus stop and I’ll wait there!” Milo snaps back with a searing scowl. He fishes in his pocket for a coin and dumps himself in one of the many empty seats. _A professional indeed._

✯✯✯

As a bus driver, Hal often gets bored. The same loop for hours on end every day of the week gets old after a month or so, and he’s had this job well over a year now. Once the edifices are committed to memory and regular customers fraternized to the point of tears, the lack of variety really opens the door for his mind to wander. So Hal doesn’t find it too important to pay attention to the traffic when he notices the woman in the car next to the bus is getting fondled by her husband in the front seat.

The bus comes up over the top of a hill and begins to head down. Hal tries to watch the road, but the man starts sliding his hand up beneath the woman’s red dress and he finds he can’t look away. Focus directed elsewhere, he hardly registers the fact the bus has started to swerve and the number on the speedometer is gradually rising.

Meanwhile, Howard Stark presses down on his own accelerator, trying to drive as fast as possible in the middle of the city. Gasping and crying out, Maria yells at him: “Can’t you go any faster?” Howard shakes with tension, determined to make it to the hospital.

Hal is staring down at the passionate couple keenly, starting to sweat, and looks up just in time to see a dump truck backing out of a driveway directly in front of the bus. Crying out and swerving hard, the bus veers into the middle of the road to avoid a collision.

“You’re doin’ fine, honey, you’re doin’ fine,” Howard soothes, when suddenly Maria shrieks and points straight in front of them. Howard’s attention follows her finger and he screams when he realizes they’re making a beeline straight for an out-of-control city bus. “Oh, my _God!_ ”

Hal swerves again to avoid the expensive little blue car speeding at him head-on, but this time, the brakes lock, making the bus drift helplessly across the street. Howard Stark’s car skids in a circle, coming to a full stop safely on the curb. But the bus careens forward down the hill, straight towards the edge of a bridge. Hal’s hands are powerless on the wheel. The four passengers on the bus -- Harrison, Penny, Julia, Milo -- are jostled violently, startling each from their individual ruminations. Wheels spinning, the horn blaring in desperation, the bus crashes through the railing of the bridge and tumbles forty feet downward -- where it smashes onto the concrete below and lies, demolished, on its crumpled side.

“Are you okay?” Howard exclaims, turning to his wife.

“Howard,” Maria wheezes. “It’s coming! _It’s coming!_ ”

“Okay, uh, lie back. Lie back, honey!” Howard helps Maria tilt back her chair and with a violent rush of adrenaline to his bloodstream, begins taking off his jacket. Maria’s cries become a hysterical, droning siren. “It’s gonna be fine, it’s gonna be fine!”

✯✯✯

In the wreckage of the bus, electricity sparks above the crushed dashboard and broken glass glitters among the debris. With soft grunts and bewildered speculation of the scene, the four passengers lift themselves through the broken windows to sit on the side of the downed vehicle. Julia helps Penny to her feet, both staring at each other in polite perplexion. Harrison nods to the others, and Milo scans the rubble in awe. The four victims stand unharmed in the middle of the disaster.

“I’m okay,” Milo observes with astonishment. He glances to the others. “You okay?”

“It looks like it, yeah,” says Julia, equally stunned. She rubs her hands down her sides and looks over herself -- no scratches, no bruises, no blood, no breaks.

“Hey, come on,” Milo jettisons. He gestures to the overturned bus, “how can we be okay?”

Julia shakes her head. “I don’t know.”

Suddenly, they hear a fifth voice, and turn to see the bus driver floating -- yes, _floating_ \-- _through_ the bus wall and up into the air, rising higher and higher. As he levitates, he mutters in disorientation and waves confusedly at the passengers before he disappears from view, followed by a trail of dusty white specks.

Looking at each other in horror, the four remaining gasp in denial when they, too, involuntarily begin to rise, weightless, into the air. Overlapping, their voices cry out in protest and anguish.

“What is this-” “This can’t happen to me!-” “Oh my God, my _kids!_ ” “ _John!_ ” “ _I have to see my kids!_ -”

Suspended and pulled through the air like a children’s mobile, they fly over the crowd of people who have gathered at the edge of the bridge, overlooking the toppled bus. Rushed past police cars and swarms of pedestrians, suddenly they are sucked into a single blue car, where the cry of a newborn baby rings cacophonously into the world.

“It’s a boy!” Howard cheers, lifting the purple and screaming child, swaddled in his jacket, for his wife to see. Shaking from pain and tears, Maria heaves with rapture, sobbing and lightly touching the baby’s cheek. “Our little Anthony.”

Shapeless, formless, crammed into the backseat, and muddled beyond belief, Julia, Milo, Penny, and Harrison talk over each other as they stare at the couple and child in wonder. “Where are we?-” “Is this heaven?-” “I’d say so, lady, this is a ‘63 Buick Riviera-” “But look -- there’s a new baby-” “There must be some mistake.”

Bundled in his father’s coat and cradled by his sobbing mother, the little baby Anthony opens his impossibly round eyes for the first time in his life. His peeping gaze skims over the seemingly empty backseat, and slowly, he smiles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Flesh,” he whispers. Maria screams. Leeches worm their way out of Anthony Stark’s gaping pupils and slowly the skies begin to rain hot blood. “Please,” he croaks. The Holy One requires human sacrifices to survive, and his mortal parents are reluctant to indulge in such savage, yet refined, practices.  
> __________  
> ((((Sorry about that)))) we were messing around at the end and she allowed me to put it in the notes lmao
> 
> Comment what you think, or leave constructive criticism? We will be making the story more our own, but the beginning of the movie is really too perfect not to write. Have any of you seen the movie? What do you think of this?
> 
> (Movie is Heart and Souls (1993) like it says in the fandom tag)


	2. The Starks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Happy and then
> 
> H e a r t b r e a k
> 
> Just a warning

“Now, what are you boys up to in there?”

In the elegantly furnished living room of the Stark mansion, Howard is hunched over the coffee table, flipping through a packet of blueprints and checking the latest financial report from work. A smile crosses his tense face when he glances up at his giggling 18-month-old son, who bounces in his baby walker eagerly and lets out a squeal of pure sunshine. Howard calls back to his wife, who is currently putting away dishes in the kitchen.

“Tony’s just laughing at the walls again.”

Tony releases another enthusiastic giggle. Kneeling in front of him, Julia coos at him and makes funny faces. Next to her are Penny and Harrison, who laugh at Tony’s chubby smile and discuss whether or not the formula Maria feeds him is making his bowels stiff. Milo paces across the living room, desperate for stimulation, when he notices Howard’s packets. He walks up to the father and peers over his shoulder casually to read the documents, not noticing he’s standing in the couch.

“Milo, please,” Julia scolds when she notices. Penny looks up from Tony and makes a sound of disgust.

“Yuck, I hate it when you do that!” She exclaims, grimacing at the way Milo’s legs seem to grow straight out of the couch and the paintings on the opposite wall are vaguely visible through his chest.

“Oh, relax,” Milo whines. “Tony likes it. Dontcha, Tony?”

Tony smiles at Milo and Julia scoffs.

“Oh, no you don’t, Tony,” she trills.

Howard looks up and gestures to his wife in the kitchen. “Honey, when do we eat?” Unbeknownst to him, his arm reaches into the space where Milo stands.

“ _Hey, man!_ ”

“As soon as it’s ready, honey.”

“Relax, okay, Papa?” Milo snaps, jumping backwards, Howard’s hand passing through his groin. “I’m hopin’ to come back with all my parts in my new life.”

Penny rolls her eyes at him, but by habit, she doesn’t indulge him with her attention. Milo stares at the portrait of his three companions surrounding the baby, takes a hopeful glance towards the front door, and makes a run for it. He barely makes it two yards before he’s knocked flat on his back by an invisible force.

Harrison watches Milo in exasperation. “At least twice a week,” he mutters.

“Hey, I know what the limit is, okay?” Milo protests, sitting up in defeat. “I just think we oughta test it once in awhile. I mean, they’ve gotta let us get away from this little tyke sometime.”

“Could be worse,” Harrison asserts. “At least we’re with a clever kooky boy like Tony.”

At this, they turn in unison to Tony and coo at him, his tiny face lighting up at the attention. “Who’s a clever kooky boy?” “We’re so lucky to be with you!” “You’re so kooky, Tony!” Penny rises to her feet and the others follow, coaxing Tony to follow them earnestly in his walker, inching toward his mother. 

Howard raises his head at the sound of the little wheels squeaking across the floor and watches Tony scoot himself across the room with his chubby legs.

“Looks like he’s off to laugh at the kitchen, now, huh?” Howard grins, shaking his head. “Buy him all these toys, he laughs at the walls.”

Milo, still pouting on the floor, is strung along like a pulley toy as Tony moves further away.

“Doesn’t this setup ever bother you guys?” Milo complains as he’s tugged behind Tony against the barrier, the inexplicable and unbreakable string never ceasing to bind his freedom to the boy. “How long are we going to be dragged around like this?”

“Doesn’t happen to me,” Harrison observes, turning back to his sullen friend. “He starts moving, I follow him, and I’m not over there running into walls.”

“I’m just tryna test the envelope.”

“You oughta test your I.Q.”

Julia snickers at this. Penny sends a loving glare back at them, warning them to behave, and Tony bounces along, babbling. “Hug-a-bug!”

Howard blinks in confusion when he hears snippets of the strange phrase come out of Tony’s mouth. “What is that? ‘Hug-a-bug’...? Where’d he get that?”

“I don’t know,” Maria ponders. “I thought you taught it to him.”

Howard shakes his head and furrows his brow, turning back to his packets. He clicks his pen shut in frustration and glares at the figures on the paper. Work is getting much more complicated than he’d prefer.

✯✯✯

“I was wondering,” A 5-year-old Tony begins on the walk up to school one day, furrowing his little brow.

“What is it, honey?” Julia smiles.

“How come I’m the only kid I know who has invisible friends like you guys?”

Shaken, Julia glances between the others, who shrug back at her with wide eyes.

“Um… that’s a very good question, Tony,” Penny covers with uncertainty. “The Lord must’ve had some idea.”

“Wish he’d let us in on it,” Julia mutters. Tony glances at her, confused.

“When I see him, I’ll ask him,” Harrison offers flatly.

“Hold on a second, Tony,” Milo pauses in his tracks, boyish excitement flaring in his eye. Coming towards the group, he has spotted a young, pretty teacher wearing a knee-length skirt. He lies down on his back, head positioned to look up right under her skirt as she walks by. “It’s Ms. Peterson. C’mon, baby, teach me something. Oh, yes -- _oh, no!_ ”

Just before he can get a peek, he’s whisked away by his limited leash. He turns his head to stare back at Ms. Peterson longingly.

Julia groans in disgust. “We should have him neutered.”

✯✯✯

To say that Tony excels in school would be an understatement. At age 5, he dazzles his teachers by speeding ahead in math and spouting science facts months before they even start the specific units. His creative writing pieces have the teachers laughing for hours after class and scratching their heads, marvelling at how such a young child could have such a vivid imagination.

Of course, Tony credits much of his success to his excellent tutors. As he’s gotten older, his parents have grown more and more distant -- his father becoming scarce at home, wrapped up in his stressful job, and his mother having grown depressed ever since the doctor told her she could have no more children. But when his parents can’t be there to help him, he has four companions he can always rely on.

When Tony’s called to present in front of the class, he proudly stands beneath the blackboard, mirroring Harrison’s movements and repeating the lines his unseen friend feeds him, almost as if the two of them are enacting their own live-action play. In their free time, Harrison teaches him of the operatic greats -- Carrelli, Pavarotti, Sutherland -- and Tony develops a flair for drama.

At home, Penny coaches Tony on his handwriting and literacy, pointing to the different letters and making sure he sounds them out correctly. She has him reading chapter books when other kids are sounding out Dr. Seuss. At night she tells him bedtime stories and quells all his fears and nightmares.

When it comes to math, Julia calls on her training as a waitress to teach him methods in memorization and logical thinking. Julia is such a good teacher, and her voice is so cheerful, that math quickly becomes Tony’s favorite subject.

Milo has little to offer the boy by means of intellectual nutrition, but he begins training Tony in his extensive knowledge of mechanics, guiding his hands through the actions of tinkering with the old engines of Howard Stark’s past glory days. Howard is irritated at first but reluctantly allows it after, once he finds that shortly after Tony’s fourth birthday, his son has created a working circuit board. 

Sometimes while Tony tinkers, he offers a screwdriver or part of a toy to Milo to help him build it. With a sad look in his eye, Milo politely refuses. Due to his friends’ intangibility, Tony too grows an acute aversion to being handed things -- he decides it’s only fair.

Much to Penny, Julia, and Harrison’s chagrin, Tony idolizes Milo. And perhaps because he never really grew up himself, Milo adheres to the little boy like an older brother. He takes advantage of Tony’s naturally witty nature and rapidly turns him into a joke-slinging sarcasm machine.

On weekends, Howard often takes out-of-town trips. And when Maria is required to leave too, Tony is left under the care of his father’s closest work friend: one Obadiah Stane. Tony isn’t sure that he likes Obie. He’s nice, and pays more attention to him than his father does, but he doesn’t like the way he looks at him when he tells him about his special friends.

One Saturday, Obie takes Tony with him to Oscorp to finish up some homework from the weekend. Sitting in Obie’s office with an insultingly childish coloring book and a half-empty carton of waxy crayons, Tony and his friends are bored out of their wits. Harrison suggests that they take a quick toilet break.

“Obie, where’s your bathroom?” Tony asks innocently.

“Three doors down the hallway,” Obie answers him, not looking away from his computer. “And don’t get lost, or I will be in big trouble.”

In the empty bathroom, Milo grins and starts whistling an upbeat melody. Smiling and joining in, the other adults begin to sing.

“ _Waaaaalk… liiike aaaa maaaan_ …”

Tony finishes using the toilet and tramps out of the stall, buckling his belt, dancing as he washes his hands and joins in the song:

“ _Walk like a man, talk like a man, walk like a man my son_ …”

Drying his hands on his pants, Tony dances in the middle of the circle while the others sing and laugh around him.

“ _No woman’s worth crawling on the earth, so walk like a man, my son_ …”

Meanwhile, Obadiah grows concerned that Tony has been gone so long. He leaves his office and approaches the bathroom, freezing in confusion when he hears a high-pitched voice singing wordlessly from behind the door.

“ _Da-doo! Da-doo! Da-doo-da-doo-da-doo!_ ”

Obadiah pushes the door open quietly to see little Tony dancing wildly in the middle of the bathroom, alone, his entire body jumping up and down with dedication, singing backup to a song Obadiah can’t hear.

✯✯✯

“My Billy is eleven years old today.”

The girls are sitting on the roof of the garage, watching the sunset, while the boys have some alone time with Tony in the workshop. Peach and gold rivers stream across the sky, glowing in Julia’s fair-colored hair and sparkling in Penny’s dark eyes. In the blaze of sunset, they almost feel real again.

“Wherever those kids are, I’m sure they’re safe,” Julia comforts her, looking out over the cityscape with longing. She smiles. “And happy.”

“I just wish I knew,” Penny sighs. Having Tony distracts her from the loss of her own children, but every night when he sleeps, she thinks of her daughters and her own little boy, heart heavy with the burden of leaving them on their own. She glances at Julia, considering her friend’s story. “You still think about John, don’t you?”

Julia swallows hard as she studies the painted sky. “Every day.”

“Oh, sweetie.” Motherly, Penny wraps her arms around Julia and hugs her tight, pressing a kiss to her hair. Together they are lost in the realms of their love: bound to a little boy who is quite literally their world, but at the sacrifice of losing those closest to them.

Julia pulls away and looks at Penny with a wistful grin. “Let’s go get the guys.” This makes them laugh, and together, they sink into the garage.

They are met with a picture-perfect scene: Harrison leans on the radio as it blares the classical station, humming along and passionately conducting an imaginary orchestra. Milo paces, as usual, studying the posters on the wall and admiring Howard’s new silver Cadillac. Tony sits on a stool that is ridiculously tall for his stature, using screwdrivers to poke at a small device on the table in front of him. However, as soon as Julia and Penny land on the garage floor, Howard slams open the door.

“Anthony, turn off that garbage, it’s too damn loud,” he snaps, a scarily deep crease between his brows.

Tony turns around, startled, and drops his tools. In a rush to get to the radio, he falls off the stool, then clambers to the music and quickly shuts it off, the shelf wobbling with the force.

“Sorry, Papa,” Tony apologizes. He gestures to the concerned Harrison behind him, and Howard grows more confused. “It’s Franco Carrelli, Harrison’s favorite.”

“What are you talking about?!”

“Harrison, he’s my friend! Milo and Penny are--” he cuts himself off when he realizes it’s hopeless explaining.

Ignoring his son, Howard’s eyes widen when he sees the dismantled device on the table. “Oh, my _God_ , Tony!” He storms into the garage and snatches up Tony’s project. “Who told you you could play with this?”

“Milo pointed it out when he he saw it on the shelf!”

Milo makes _cut it out_ motions with his hands, but Tony is too heated to notice his warnings. Julia grabs Penny’s arm in fright, sharing nervous glances with the hunched Harrison and panicked Milo.

“ _Who?!_ ” 

Tony opens his mouth to explain, but Howard stops him cold. “Tony, that’s enough. I don’t want to hear anything more about your _imaginary friends!_ Now go to your room, and _don’t mess with my stuff!_ ”

Tony trudges past his father and back into the house, head hanging. Milo is poised, ready to square up, but after a moment gets dragged along behind Tony and the others.

✯✯✯

Sitting down in the Stark’s living room, Obadiah stares darkly at Howard and shakes his head.

“I’m telling you, Howie, you’ve got to get your son checked out.”

Howard glares at him for a moment, taking in a deep breath. Maria speaks up first, desperate to defend her only son.

“Alright, Obie: Tony has a rampant imagination. But really, since when has creativity ever-”

“He tells the security guards at Oscorp that if he doesn’t get to enter the computer rooms and update the programs, you’ll give him ‘an awful beating’.”

Howard sighs, mulling over what his longtime friend has told him. He shamefully remembers how mad he got at Tony for destroying his old Buick, and how after he sent him to his room, realized with shocking pride his son had created a fully-functional V8 Motorbike Engine.

“But, Obie, you did see what he made, right?” Howard jerks his thumb to the garage where the invention sits enshrined on a shelf. “I mean, he’s only seven!”

Obadiah raises an eyebrow in response, but hardly seems impressed.

“Tony’s behavior is concerning me, Howie,” Obadiah pushes, finality resonating with each word. “If you don’t do something about his _imagination_ , I will. And I think you’d prefer to choose the psychotherapist yourself.”

Maria reaches to Howard and takes his hand. Coldly, the couple glares at Obadiah, who only smiles in understanding.

“It’s for his own safety,” he reassures them, reaching out to touch Howard’s knee.

Maria looks beseechingly at her husband, but he can’t meet her eyes.

“Honey, I think he might have a point…”

“Howard-”

“Obie, thank you for stopping by,” Howard says, standing, and ignoring the sick feeling in his stomach. “If you’ll pardon me, I have some business to attend to.”

Obadiah nods his head approvingly and rises to his feet. “Maria, Howie. Have a good night. And tell Tony I said hi.”

Tony, who is hidden from his parents’ view by the stairwell, glares. As the Starks herd Obadiah toward the door, Julia and Penny rush Tony up the steps to bed. Climbing up after them, Harrison and Milo share an ill glance, dread brewing in their hearts. 

✯✯✯

Sheltered by his four guardians, Tony peeks out through his usual hiding spot on the stairs at his parents circle each other in the kitchen. Rain drums against the roof like a sacrificial beat, so loud that his parents are shouting at a higher volume than normal just to be heard.

“How could you even _think_ it?” Maria gapes at Howard in disbelief as he paces behind the marbled island. “We are _not_ putting our son in some -- some _mental hospital!_ ”

Punctuated by a crack of thunder, Howard turns around and throws his hands up in exasperation. “Oh, Maria! No one is saying that. Dr. Stephen Strange is a child psychiatrist. He’s just gonna do some tests!”

“ _Tests?_ ”

“Therapy, tests, whatever it is!” Seething, Howard wipes his brow. “Everyone says he needs help. Obie, his teacher-”

“That old battleaxe?” Maria scoffs, cocking her head. “She has no idea how to handle a smart, precocious kid like Tony.”

Tony glances at Julia sheepishly. She smiles at him kindly, but the smile doesn’t reach her eyes. Instead, she looks rather scared.

“Tony has a very serious problem!” Howard shouts. “He blames everything on these imaginary people! Damn it, I’ve been saying for years we should get him proper care, and you know it!”

“Why?” Maria spits. “Because he has a vivid imagination?”

“Someone around here has gotta stop living in a fantasy world.”

Maria stops short, heartbroken. “...Is it really so terrible? Tony was our only chance, I’m never giving up on him.”

“It’s not giving up. It’s moving on,” Howard states, not wavering in his eye contact. “You can’t continue adhering to this. You can’t play his little games!”

Tony flinches at this, tears springing to his eyes, before he turns and scrambles up the stairs. When he and the others reach his room, Penny talks him through his bedtime routine while he whimpers inconsolably. Watching Penny coach the boy into bed, Milo reaches out and grasps Julia’s hand. She squeezes it in response. Harrison wraps an arm around Penny’s shoulders after Tony snuggles himself into bed and holds her tight.

They watch Tony fall asleep in silence. Hours later, after they’ve fallen deep in debate, the tension rises between the group while the rainstorm increases outside.

“Not one of you knows what it’s like to lose a child,” Penny says, halting the conversation. “I lost _three_.” Her voice breaks on the last word. “I’m _not_ losing Tony.”

“Penny, look what’s going on here,” Harrison says, touching her shoulder. “This is wrong.”

“Yeah,” Julia concedes sadly. “It’s gotten way out of hand.” She thinks for a moment, then huffs. “Maybe we were never supposed to talk to him. Or even let him see us-”

“Hey, come on,” Milo interrupts, his voice strained. “We can’t just go invisible on the kid. It’s _stupid!_ He’s gonna hate us, I’m tellin’ you.” His voice rises toward the end and Tony stirs in his sleep. They all hush for a moment.

“Julia, we’re his family,” Penny protests shakily.

“No, we’re not his family,” Harrison scoffs quietly. “We’re… I don’t know what we are.” In pain, he turns away, looking out the rain-streaked window pane.

“He’s got a mother and a father,” Julia says. “We’ve gotta let them be his parents.”

“Really?” Milo laughs angrily. “They haven’t been doing too swell of a job so far.”

“Well, he’s got Obie,” Harrison says.

“ _Fuck_ Obie,” Milo snarls.

Penny shakes her head desperately, her heart fluttering weakly in her throat. “Leaving Tony will be like dying all over again.”

“Penny…” Harrison mutters. “I never had any children. But for a little while with Tony… I got to feel like a father. This isn’t easy for any of us.”

“Now, just wait.” Milo rubs a hand over his eyes. “Now, if we’re so bad for Tony, how come we’re stuck to him, huh? Tell me that.” Met with silence, he glances between his companions with tears in his eyes.

“We don’t know, okay?” Julia sighs.

“So, what?” Milo retorts. “What, we don’t let him see us or hear us? What, we never even talk to him? We just hang around? Watch him? For the rest of his life? What, like a buncha ghosts?” He pauses, biting back a humiliating sob. “That’s gonna be hell.”

Penny sends him a sad look. “Maybe that’s what this is, Milo.”

They stand in silence for a few seconds, nobody willing to condemn them just yet. Finally, Penny hastily moves to Tony’s bedside, ready to prod the sleeping boy awake.

“Well, I guess we better wake him up and say goodbye!”

“Wait!” Milo protests.

“Tony, Tony-”

“Shh!”

“Sweetie, Tony?” She sings, tears already sliding down her cheeks and onto the quilt.

Tony stirs, turns toward Penny’s voice, and opens his big brown eyes. “What?” He asks quietly.

“Oh, goodness,” Penny gasps with a loving smile. “You are such a big boy.”

“We love you, Tony,” Harrison says.

“I love you too,” Tony yawns with a sleepy grin.

“Tony.” At the strange serious tone of Penny’s voice, the little boy turns to her and grows frightened when he notices the tears falling down her cheeks. “You know how we’ve always said we didn’t know how long we were gonna be with you?”

“Yes.”

“Well, um…” Penny suddenly finds she can’t speak around the lump in her throat. Julia steps in.

“It’s time for you to be like other kids,” she smiles sorrowfully. “Just be with your mommy and your daddy.”

Gasping, Tony sits upright in bed, shaking his head _no._

“Tony,” Harrison explains. “We feel the time has come for us to go away.”

“What?! No!-”

“Yeah, buddy,” Milo says, kneeling down to Tony’s eye level. “It’ll be a lot better for you. Honest.”

“We don’t want to, Tony, but we have to go,” Penny whispers.

“No, _please!_ I’ll do anything you want,” he fights, his voice shattering. “I’ll pretend you’re not there, okay? It will be a secret.”

“Oh, we can’t do that, sweetie. It doesn’t work,” Julia says remorsefully.

“Don’t cry,” Penny comforts. “We’re gonna be right here watchin’ over you. Just… quietly.”

Tony turns his puckered face to Milo in desperation.

“You’ll be okay, kiddo,” he promises. His vision suddenly blurry with tears, he blinks quickly and swallows a sob. “You’ll grow up. You’ll forget about us.”

Tony shakes his head violently, feeling his little heart break inside of him. Burning tears spill over his cheeks. “No, I won’t. I won’t!”

Milo takes a deep breath and gives Tony his best million-dollar smile. “So long, buckaroo.” Pulling out his finger guns, he shoots Tony one last secret handshake before he slowly vanishes from sight.

“Come back-! Don’t leave me-! _Milo!_ -”

“I’m so sorry, Tony,” Harrison says, watching the agony befall the little boy.

“You said you were my special friends, and special friends don’t go away!”

“You’re gonna find new friends,” Penny vows. “You certainly will. You are a great guy.”

“I don’t want new friends. I want _you!_ ”

Biting her lip, Julia reaches out to embrace Tony, but her hands pass right through him as if she weren’t there at all. She takes a shuddering breath and beams dejectedly at the crying child. “I just wish I could give you a big hug.”

“ _Julia!_ ”

“Goodbye, sweetie,” she whispers, slowly dissolving into the air. “I love you.” 

“I love you,” Tony blubbers. “Come back!”

“Goodbye, Tony.” Harrison smiles at him, but as he starts to fade, quickly looks away, absolutely unable to take it anymore.

“Please stay -- oh -- _Harrison!_ ”

Penny, now the only one remaining, lowers her voice to the calming tone she once used on her own children. “Tony?”

“Huh?”

Her face hot and wet and her soul twisting with pain, she gazes directly into Tony’s eyes and feels her heart swell with love. “I am so proud of you.”

“Don’t go! Penny-”

“Tony,” she shushes him gently before gradually disappearing from him. “ _No worries._ ”

“I need you!” Tony bawls into the empty air. “Just come back, come back. _Don’t go!_ Don’t go, come back! _Milo! Julia! Harrison! Penny! Milo! Come back!_ ”

Weeping in his rumpled covers and beseeching his rain-silenced surroundings, Tony Stark is truly alone for the first time in his life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up, Tony's teen years and the cave!
> 
> This gets less like Heart and Souls and more like Iron Man/The Avengers the further it goes, so if you made it past the first two chapters you are in Familiar Territory


	3. The Cave

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony's teen years and the cave.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Extra long chapter for the extra long break!

Howard sends his son to therapy for three years.

The overall success of the endeavor is debatable, but by the end, Dr. Stephen Strange has managed to convince Tony that his underlying severe emotional problems are what caused him to suffer from debilitating hallucinations. Prescribed stabilizing medication and dragged through hours of humiliating sessions a week, Tony has no choice but to believe him. After all, his visions disappears without a trace, and the rest of the world continues as scheduled. So with the help of the pills and a forced emotional renovation, Tony’s memories of the invisible people are soon almost as faint as their actual existence.

By the age of ten, Tony is off his meds and starting to feel like what he’s been told is normal. He hopes this means his father will spend more time with him. Unfortunately, he doesn’t.

Instead, his parents hire a _nanny,_ whom Tony despises. He can’t put his finger on it specifically, but he feels he once had a better mother figure in his life, one who was actually good at math and one who told him decent bedtime stories. Sometimes, when he gets really sad, he hums himself a tune to help him get to sleep at night. He doesn’t remember exactly where the tune came from or what the lyrics are, but forever at his side, Penny always sings along:

“ _If you try to find him, he won’t be there… but if you’re feelin’ blue, and a little bit scared, he’ll be right beside you: Mr. Hug-a-Bug Bear._ ”

✯✯✯

Howard Stark eventually pushes his son away from him for good. And when he does talk to him, it isn’t about what’s happening in Tony’s life, and it isn’t about what Tony’s been going through. It’s about work, or stocks, or Captain _fucking_ America.

Tony stops reaching out to his father, and neither of them seem to mind. His mother, dejected as her husband becomes emotionally unreachable and her son passes into adulthood, doesn’t give her beloved little boy as many hugs as she used to.

Penny thinks about her kids more often. She grows close to Harrison, who is infatuated with her tales of parenthood. Milo and Julia -- who once thought they hated each other -- sometimes hold hands.

Every once in awhile they try to reappear for Tony, but he never pays them any mind.

✯✯✯

In 1987, a decade after his childhood crisis, Tony graduates from MIT at only seventeen. His parents are there, and Obadiah, and his ex-psychotherapist (although his parents made sure not to tell him he was coming). But nobody cheers him on louder than his ghosts.

They have to follow him to the podium when he accepts his diploma. Penny and Harrison are hot messes, bawling all over each other and barely able to catch their breath. Julia relishes every moment, unable to stop grinning, frequently having to block herself from trying to hug Tony. Instead she resorts to jumping on Milo’s back and squeezing her legs around his midriff, her energy uncontainable. Milo is at the point of yodelling, pride bursting through his heart, watching the only thing he’s ever grown to love earn an ivy-league diploma at the age of _seventeen_ in the field Milo himself trained him in. (If you asked him later he would say he didn’t cry, but Julia can tell you otherwise.)

When Tony turns to walk off the stage, he’s beaming like the dickens, and Penny wipes at her face as she admires him.

“I’m so proud of you, baby!” She exclaims. Tony doesn’t notice, and accidentally walks through her on his way down the steps.

✯✯✯

One snowy day in December, 1991, Howard and Maria Stark are killed in a car accident.

Tony doesn’t cry. When Obadiah comes to the house to deliver the news, Tony sits down lightly in a chair and stares blankly out the frosty window. Obie tries to talk to him, but Tony acts like he’s just another ghost. Obie takes the boy into his arms and holds him tight, promising things will be okay.

Tony calmly disengages, goes upstairs, and screams into his pillow.

Then he tears apart his room, silently wrenching down his curtains, ripping open drawers, and tossing supplies across the floor. Digging through his desk, he suddenly finds an old painting -- one he must’ve made when he was five or six -- with a little boy in the center, holding hands with four smiling people while caricatures of his parents smile down from the sunny sky. Tony stares at the picture for a moment before his face crumples in misery and he rips it into pieces. Lying on his back in his unmade bed, he stares at the ceiling, unblinking, while the snowflakes pile against his frozen windowpane. He feels the snow catch in drifts within his hollowed heart.

✯✯✯

A couple months later, when Tony can function again, he takes over at Stark Industries, with Obadiah as his mentor. Although Tony is technically in charge of everything, Obie gradually absorbs control of executive functions and press conferences once it becomes obvious Tony prefers to be a smartass television personality. He falls into a routine, spending his days inventing groundbreaking technology in the basement and his nights sleeping with every pretty girl he meets.

“He takes after me,” Milo boasts proudly after a particularly scandalous night.

“You’re just excited because you haven’t seen a pair of boobs since Tony breastfed,” Julia snaps with disgust.

“Yeah, and?”

Harrison touches Julia’s arm. “Please ignore him; he’s grossing me out, too.”

In what seems to be the blink of an eye, Tony captures the hearts of not only America, but the entire modern world with his mechanical genius and charming persona. His innovations in military technology soon dominate the industry across the globe.

Tony Stark is suddenly the most well-known face on the planet.

✯✯✯

“Don’t you think it’s _time?_ ” Julia presses as the group argues over whether or not to continue trying to let Tony see them again. As the years pass, and his wealth and fame accumulate, the ghosts are helpless in watching his self-destructive independence tear at his well-being. “He’s so _lonely._ And he needs more family than just Stane.” She wrinkles her nose at the mere mention of the name.

Penny is already shaking her head, holding up a wagging finger. “No, we already decided we wouldn’t try to show ourselves again. If it hasn’t worked so far, it’s just not meant to be.”

Milo’s excitement grows with a hopeful smile. “No, no, he’s so alone, he’ll be so happy to see us-!”

“How do you not see that this would traumatize him?!” Penny almost shouts at him. “He went through _therapy_ because of us, Milo! _Medication!_ ” She turns in righteous anger toward Julia. “Julia, he cried himself to sleep for _months_ after we left him! Do you not _remember?_ ”

“I remember, Penny,” Julia chokes out coldly. “I remember it _every day._ ”

Penny sucks in a deep breath and composes herself, her dark eyes glistening with unshed tears. “We can’t be there for him anymore. We are _nothing_ to him, and we should remain _nothing_ unless he really needs us.”

Harrison places a calming hand on her shoulder. “We just miss him. The way he -- we -- used to be.”

Penny slumps, like the strings that had been holding her head high and shoulders back had been cut. “I know. I do too.”

Milo, who had been quiet through her rant, speaks up. “How do we know when he really needs us? How do we know when we’re not -- _nothing?_ ”

Turning her face away, Penny speaks shakily. “I doubt we’ll ever see the day he needs our help. But I just don’t know.”

They don’t bring up the subject again.

✯✯✯

In 2008, on a trip to Afghanistan to demonstrate his most radical weapon yet -- the Jericho missile -- Tony and his convoy are ambushed by the growing extremist terrorist group: the Ten Rings. In an explosion of one of his company’s own rocket-launched grenades, Tony is critically injured, and shortly afterwards, taken captive. His captors put a burlap sack over his head, but his ghosts see everything.

The moment the first blast goes off signifies the beginning of the worst three months of their afterlives. Tony leaps out of the Humvee -- for heaven’s sake, he _leaps out_ of the _moving_ Humvee -- and he scrambles behind a boulder, pulling out his phone to call Rhodey. His ghosts chase after him, racing to find hiding spots even though they’re intangible. The grenade actually ends up landing in the exact spot Milo stands.

When it explodes, the debris flies straight through the ghosts like wind. The blast doesn’t even knock them from when they are. So when the smoke begins to clear, and they see Tony has been tossed several feet to the side, they rush to him, screaming.

They watch helplessly -- choking back sobs, breathing hard, their frantic grabs at him futile -- as Tony coughs in stunned pain, ripping apart his suit and pulling away the bullet-proof vest on his front, to find a wine-red rose blooming over his chest. For a moment, it seems like he can almost see four huddled figures around him. But then his head collapses back into the dirt and he falls unconscious.

Penny, Harrison, Julia, and Milo are conscious, though: painfully conscious. Rockets still flying over their heads and their only son bleeding out in the dust, they huddle around Tony as if their energies could prevent him from harm. The sight of the dripping red makes Julia sick, and Penny is in shambles at the idea of losing her only remaining child. Milo is on the verge of a panic attack, and so, somehow, Harrison -- timid, anxious Harrison -- is the one who keeps everyone grounded, holding hands, muttering what might be a prayer, squeezing each other tight and forming a snowglobe around Tony with their entities. 

The terrorists are upon him within moments. A group of armed men pounds across the dirt and surrounds the millionaire, weapons trained on his wounded chest. A man in combat gear and a mask over his face pulls Tony up roughly by the armpits and another man grabs him by the feet. Screaming and chasing after them as they drag him, boneless, to one of their vehicles, the group follows to where the terrorists toss him in roughly and screech away, tires blowing up dust clouds. His family is forced along in a suspended caravan behind them, Julia and Penny sobbing and Harrison silent with shock. Milo tries to run and catch up to Tony, to no avail.

They are convinced that when Tony comes out of the vehicle, he will no longer be alive.

✯✯✯

Tony comes to in a cave, sitting stiffly in a chair with his hands bound tightly behind his back and a cold gun pressed against the back of his skull. Someone rips the burlap sack off his head and he is temporarily blinded by a scorching yellow light. Delirious and light-headed, Tony can hardly make out the droning voice of someone demanding something in an Arab language. Slowly becoming aware of the throbbing pain in his chest, Tony looks down to see a thick white bandage, dabbled with blood, taped messily over his sternum. Head spinning, limbs numb, he blacks out again shortly after.

Hours later, he screams. Somebody is digging into his chest with a scalpel -- a knife -- a sword. Agonizing pain shoots outward from his sternum through his limbs and all the way back into his heart. A glaring white light pierces his vision, and dark silhouettes hover in shadow: one figure digs a tool into Tony’s chest and he howls, back arching uncontrollably. Four other figures lean near to him, and their presence is warmer, calmer, and somehow they keep his erratic heartbeat from just giving out. As the first figure secures a gas mask over Tony’s mouth and the world starts to blur, he almost hears the others singing a song.

✯✯✯

“I never thought about it before today,” Harrison whispers to the others, staring over their living child while he lies unconscious on the operating table, a thick bandage wrapped over his chest, “but what happens to us if Tony dies?”

The silence that follows is too painful to break. Julia grabs Harrison’s arm and pulls herself into his chest like a young girl at a horror movie. Milo shakes his head as he watches Tony sleep, staring at the revolting feeding tube worming its way out of his nose, trying to work up the right words to say.

“I mean, we can’t _die,_ ” he observes, “since we already did that. Maybe when he dies… Maybe that’s when _we_ move on…?”

“We’re just here to follow him around for all his life until he dies and then we’re free to go?” Julia ridicules softly, briefly pulling her face from Harrison’s coat. “Like that makes a lot of sense, Milo.”

“Like any of this makes any sense,” Milo mutters, but his voice shakes and his eyes don’t stray from Tony’s tranquilized, serene face.

“Maybe our job was to protect him,” Penny says. Her voice is so quiet it’s barely above an exhale. She hugs her arms around herself, and drenched with tears, she looks very small. “Maybe we were -- _I_ was wrong.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself, Penny,” says Harrison. “That doesn’t make sense either. We can’t touch him or anyone else. We can’t stop a missile or take a bullet for him. We can’t even pick up a pencil.”

“No, but we could talk to him,” Penny mutters. “We could be there for him.”

Milo nods his head sadly, but then disagrees. “But we ruined his life, remember?”

“Maybe we’re here for _this,_ ” Julia says, bringing a calm silence upon the group. “This, right now. Maybe now… we’re not nothing.”

✯✯✯

When Tony jerks awake, the first thing he does is frantically pull the tube out of his nose. He’s hyperventilating at the shock of his first moment of lucidity since the bombings began, and slowly comprehending the correlation between the disturbingly alien pain in his chest and his blurry memories of the last few hours. Lifting his head in panic, he tears away part of the wrapping over the dangerously hard object he feels in his chest and gasps in pathetic horror when he sees it.

(Milo had reassured the others that the heart the other man in the cave had given their baby boy would work, for the time being. It really was quite ingenious: an electromagnet connected to a car battery to prevent the shrapnel lodged deep in his flesh from piercing his heart. Milo had attempted to explain the mechanics of it, but Tony’s screaming during the surgery crushed any desire to think about technology.)

Tony takes a moment to collect himself, gingerly placing a hand over the foreign metal object, on the verge of throwing up. His shaking fingers trace the rim of the cold metal circle and he stares at the inflamed flesh around the edge of it with disbelief. Grunting, he rolls over on his side and tries to get up.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

Tony freezes, but the voice isn’t the only thing that stops him -- when he twists to the side, something like a leash catches him and prevents him from moving any farther. That’s when he notices the wires trailing down out of the dirty bandaged rags, following them with his eyes to where they attach to a heavy car battery.

Tony slowly sits up, his body weak and his mind reeling. He sees the man who spoke approaching him -- a slight man, with round eyes and a sickly figure. He stares at him, trying to work the words out of his dry mouth.

“What the hell did you do to me?”

“What I did?” The man responds, softly and slowly, an almost-smile crossing his face. “What I did was to save your life.” He comes closer so Tony can see him better and he is taken aback by the kindness in his eyes. “I removed all the shrapnel I could, but there’s a lot left, and it’s headed into your atrial septum.” Tony feels dizzy trying to take this in. “Here, want to see? I have a souvenir. Look.”

The man gently tosses him a small glass jar, which Tony catches without breaking eye contact. He holds the container up to the dim light, rotating it, observing the tiny shards of bloody metal tumble over each other tamely. His pulse beats wildly in his throat.

“I’ve seen many wounds like that in my village,” the kind surgeon continues. “We call them the walking dead, because it takes about a week for the barbs to reach the vital organs.”

Tony swallows and taps the mechanical addition to his body.

“What is this?”

“That is an electromagnet, hooked up to a car battery,” the man says, “and it’s keeping the shrapnel from entering your heart.” Tony glances upwards and notices a small camera embedded on a post near the ceiling, trained on him, a red light flashing. The surgeon follows his gaze and looks back at him in understanding. “That’s right. Smile.”

✯✯✯

Tony soon finds out the purpose of his capture. A group of soldiers take Tony and the surgeon outside and roughly yank the hood off of Tony’s head, making him squint in the harsh sunlight. Laid out coldly before him is their extensive stockpile of Stark weapons. Observing Tony take in the murderous contraband in horror, the group’s leader addresses him sternly, speaking to him with an admiring smile and a look of condescending power in his eye.

The surgeon translates. “He wants you to build the Jericho missile.” As Tony still gapes at the large collection of illegally acquired weapons of war, the man speaks again. “He wants to know what you think.”

“I think you got a lot of my weapons,” Tony responds steadily.

The man starts speaking again, taking Tony’s response as an acknowledgement. The surgeon waits a beat before picking up the translation. “He says they have everything you need to build the Jericho missile.”

At Tony’s incredulous look, the surgeon half-smiles apologetically. The man is still talking. “He wants you to make a list of materials. He says for you to start working immediately, and when you’re done, he will set you free.”

“No, he won’t,” whispers Julia, and Milo silently takes her hand. 

“No, he won’t,” Tony smiles blankly, staring steadily into the man’s unfeeling eyes. 

“No, he won’t,” the surgeon repeats, in English, nodding his head to the leader. Tony and the surgeon share a grim look. They’re both too bright to miss that there is no way the terrorist organization that kidnapped him will also release him. Tony and the leader shake hands and the sack is replaced as Tony is ushered, stumbling and blind, back into the cave. His ghosts trail behind him, absorbing the plethora of ill-begotten weapons in dismay -- a wasteland not unlike a graveyard, with _Stark_ etched on every headstone.

✯✯✯

Hungry, exhausted, and growing more desolate by the second, Tony cradles his car battery in his lap while the surgeon graciously tries to buck up his will to live. Tony has found that the surgeon is a loving man -- so loving, in fact, that it sometimes hurts to look at him. And as the hours have begun to turn over into days, the dark providence of his remaining life has finally started to dawn on Tony.

“I’m sure they’re looking for you,” the surgeon asserts, “but they will never find you in these mountains.” He sighs as he gazes intently at Tony, who avoids his eyes and traces the battery with his gloved fingers. The surgeon can see the light of hope leaving Tony’s body and it infuriates him. His voice dropping his usual timid hum, his next words make Tony lift his eyes shamefully. “Look, what you just saw: that is your legacy, Stark. Your life’s work, in the hands of those _murderers._ Is that how you want to go out? Is this the last act of defiance of the great Tony Stark?”

Tony blinks and fights the existential panic back down into his lungs. Penny nods her head approvingly at the valiant attempt to galvanize the mechanic, elbowing Milo as if to say, _Now,_ that’s _good parenting._

The surgeon leans forward just a hair, the pressure between the captives exponentially increased. “Or are you going to do something about it?”

Tony snaps. “Why should I do anything?” Julia flinches at the harsh tone, wondering where her optimistic little boy had gone. Tony isn’t angry at the surgeon, exactly, but ends up spitting flames at him anyway. It’s as if he feels the electromagnet throb inside his wound with every word. “They’re going to kill me, you, either way. And if they don’t, I’ll probably be dead in a week.”

Tony doesn’t make eye contact for a cold, solid moment, but when he finally does look back at him, the surgeon’s wry smile stirs up something long forgotten in him -- something almost like love. “Well, then, this is a very important week for you, isn’t it?”

Harrison stares hard at Tony, hoping at least an ounce of his belief in him has gone through to Tony’s head. Milo, his hand unconsciously wrapped around Julia’s arm, glances at Penny with a smile. They know their son better than he knows himself -- he could never turn down a challenge.

And sure enough, the blaze returns to Tony’s eyes, and he almost grins.

✯✯✯

The surgeon lets their captors know Tony Stark is ready to start work on the Jericho missile. Suddenly, their quarantined dungeon-like sector of the cave is abuzz with men loading in supplies, papers, tools, weapons, lights, and equipment. Tony carries the car battery under one arm, moving about energetically, directing traffic and audaciously barking orders. The ghosts run about like a troop of boy scouts, surveying the weapons, the soldiers, and the intricate way Tony begins to organize his new laboratory.

“If this is going to be my workstation, I want it well lit. I want these up! I need welding gear -- I don’t care if it’s acetylene or propane -- I need a soldering station, I need helmets, I’m gonna need some goggles, I would like a smelting cup, and I need two sets of precision tools.”

With each confident order, a little bit more of Tony’s true colors shine through the blood and sweat and grime.

He starts work right away, although unbeknownst to the terrorists, he certainly isn’t building the Jericho. Tony dismantles rockets and guns, deliberately searching through parts to find the hidden pieces of tech he needs. Much like the ghosts, who pace about madly like purposeless fire ants, the surgeon is eager to help Tony in any possible way.

“You know, we might be more productive if you include me in the planning process,” he offers restlessly. Tony grunts, but ignores him and tosses a large plastic hull to the floor.

“What is he _doing?_ ” Harrison asks Milo as they peer over Tony’s sweat-sheened shoulders at his work. Milo shakes his head in concentration as Tony throws a large metal cylinder haphazardly behind him. It flies through Penny’s leg on the way.

“Watch it, Tony,” she warns with a futile glare at her boy’s back. “You know I hate that.”

The surgeon approaches Tony as the engineer triumphantly lifts a small piece of metal to the light. “What is that?”

“That’s palladium,” Tony answers. “0.15 grams. We need at least 1.6, so why don’t you go break down the other 11?”

“Palladium,” Milo mutters. A smile, one of the few any of them have experienced in the past week, crosses his face like a sunbeam. “Hey, I think I know what exactly it is Tony’s doin’!”

“Oh, Milo, please tell us,” Penny gushes, hurrying to him, and the others nod in assent.

Milo shakes his head. “No, no -- I want him to tell us himself!”

It takes the rest of the day, but after the surgeon has helped Tony dismember the remaining missiles, they melt the collected palladium in a thick crucible. Tony, restrained in movement by his hulking car battery, peers anxiously at the surgeon’s hands as he picks up the hot cup with tongs and slowly walks back to the workstation. Coming to a stop before the complicated creation on the table, the surgeon tentatively begins to pour the liquid metal into the mold.

“Careful,” Tony breathes. “Careful, we only get one shot at this.”

“Relax,” mutters the surgeon with his calming tongue, cracking a smile. “I have steady hands. Why do you think you’re still alive?”

Tony glances warily at the surgeon as he finishes pouring the palladium into the cast. The absolute kindness in the surgeon’s eyes reaches something deep within Tony’s gut, a place he’d gotten used to feeling empty in, a recess nobody had been able to bore their way into in decades.

“What do I call you?” he asks.

“My name is Yinsen.”

“Yinsen,” Tony repeats. Strangely, the warmth in his heart almost makes him want to cry. “Nice to meet you.”

Yinsen pauses, glancing at Tony comically. “Nice to meet you, too.”

When the palladium cools into the thin ring desired, Tony carefully extracts it and begins delicately constructing his project. Occasionally soldiers barge in to check that he is making progress. Yinsen assures them he is working tirelessly on the desired doomsday weapon.

Over a day later, after endless tinkering, hammering, bending, and clicking, and without a moment of sleep to support him, Tony’s creation comes to life in his hand. He turns it over, admiring the round skeleton and the angelic blue light emanating from it. Milo, who’d been watching the process the entire time, cheers and beckons the others over.

“My clever little boy,” Penny clucks with pride.

“That doesn’t look like a Jericho missile,” Yinsen observes, returning to the engineer’s side.

“That’s because it’s a miniaturized arc reactor,” Tony says, presenting it to him. Milo mutters _I knew it_ under his breath. “I got a big one powering my factory at home.” He catches Yinsen’s eye. “It could keep the shrapnel out of my heart.”

Yinsen understands, nodding, but still stares at the arc reactor in awe. “But what could it generate?”

“If my math is right, and it always is… three gigajoules per second.”

Milo whistles. “I don’t know what that means,” Harrison whispers to Julia.

“That could run your heart for fifty lifetimes,” Yinsen says in disbelief.

“Yeah,” Tony says, setting the arc reactor back on the table. “Or something big for fifteen minutes.”

The ghosts glance between each other curiously, wondering what else Tony has got shoved up his sleeve.

✯✯✯

“Yuck. I can’t bear to watch.”

“Relax, Penny, it’s consensual this time.”

Tony’s on the operating table again. Yinsen labors over him, extracting the now-obsolete electromagnet and replacing it with Tony’s intricate arc reactor. It’s not bloody this time, and there’s no screaming, although occasionally Tony yelps dramatically when the socket wall is hit and Yinsen tells him to hush.

“It’s actually rather fascinating,” Harrison remarks as Yinsen locks a large copper ring into the bottom of the cavity. At Julia’s incredulous look, he shrugs. “I mean, I could never have been a surgeon myself -- I’m far too nervous -- but the field has always captivated me.”

“Okay, weirdo,” Milo rolls his eyes. “Myself, I kinda want a headlight in my chest. The chicks would probably dig me.”

Julia glares at him. “Trust me, you’ve already got a hole where your heart should be, and it doesn’t make you any less unflattering.” Milo sticks his tongue out at her.

Tony sits up when Yinsen finishes, no longer handicapped by being plugged into a battery larger than his head, and smirks as he raps his fingernails over the new implant. He thanks Yinsen, who is wiping his sweaty hands with a rag, and jerks his head towards his work table.

“Look at what a man our little boy has grown into,” Penny beams as she dances around Tony merrily. “Look at how handsome and strong he is with his crazy cyborg doodads. Ugh, a mother can only _dream!_ ”

“It’s like a superhero origin story,” Harrison laughs, “working his way through hell all by himself.”

“Well, not quite by himself,” Julia reminds them, and gestures to Yinsen as he joins Tony at the table.

Tony glances quickly up at one of the cameras embedded in the ceiling before sliding a pile of papers towards Yinsen. “This is our ticket out of here.”

“What is it?”

“Flatten them out and look.”

Yinsen pushes the papers flat and he and the ghosts gasp when the thin sheets of blueprint layer to reveal what looks like a _giant metal suit._

“Oh, wow,” Yinsen whispers, and Tony smiles.

Milo furrows his brow and leans over to Harrison.

“Uh… what exactly did you say about a ‘superhero’?”

✯✯✯

Weeks go by, filled with smelting, sawing, welding, soldering. Tony builds his suit. Yinsen disguises works in progress and excess machinery to make it look like the construction of the Jericho. Harrison and Julia have started to pick up on the Arab languages thrown about by the soldiers, and Milo spends time teaching Penny how exactly Tony’s rockets work. Time bleeds together for the six souls, and the weeks (which have silently morphed into months) in the cave feel like a purgatorial black hole.

“You still haven’t told me where you’re from,” Tony remarks to Yinsen as they sit together one night, eating their daily rations of stew.

“I’m from a small town called Gulmira,” Yinsen answers. “It’s actually a nice place.”

Tony nods, chewing. “Got a family?”

“Yes, and I will see them when I leave here.” Yinsen smiles calmly, leaning back to look over the younger man intently. “And you, Stark?”

Tony swallows, staring at the cave wall, thinking of his depressive and guilt-ridden mother, his vainglorious and apathetic father, and the irritatingly overbearing Obie, and a sudden memory of a young child’s painting flashes across his mind. But the vision of his childhood emotional anchor sinks as soon as it resurfaces. He shakes his head. “No.”

The ghosts glance between each other, but nobody speaks. They don’t have to.

“No,” Yinsen repeats softly. “So you’re a man who has everything… and nothing.”

✯✯✯

Towards the end of the third month, the iron suit has almost become complete. As more of the accessories accumulate, however, it becomes harder and harder for Tony and Yinsen to appear as if they are making the Jericho. Until one day, when Tony is heavily engrossed in welding two pieces together, an armada of soldiers bursts through the doors of his cell with voices shouting and guns trained on his face.

Tony drops what he’s doing and puts his hands behind his head, looking to Yinsen in panic. Yinsen mirrors his actions and faces the squadron calmly. Passing through the front line of gunned men, a bald man with fiercely drawn eyebrows shows himself to the two captives. Tony doesn’t recognize him, but by the look in his eye and the relative quality of his uniform, he knows he’s in charge.

The man slowly approaches Tony, his hawk-like eyes scrutinizing him like a scavenger circling a carcass. With each step, Tony’s throat grows tighter, absolutely certain that he’s about to get shot in the face. However, at the last second, the man veers to the side and looks over Tony’s messy work table. He speaks suddenly, sending a shock down Tony’s spine.

“The bow and arrow once was the pinnacle of weapons technology.”

Tony glances at Yinsen. _He speaks English._ Frantically, Tony rifles through his memory to determine if he or Yinsen had said anything incriminating that could’ve had them discovered. But the man keeps talking, keeping him too anxious to think.

“It allowed the great Genghis Khan to rule from the Pacific to the Ukraine.” He crosses to another table and lifts the blueprints for the iron suit. Tony almost takes a step forward to stop him, but freezes instantly, mouth as dry as the desert he was captured in. “An empire twice the size of Alexander the Great’s and four times the size of the Roman Empire.” The man throws down the blueprints and glares at Tony. “But today, whoever holds the latest Stark weapons rules these lands. And soon, it will be my turn.”

Seizing a pair of tongs, the man picks up a burning ember from the firepit and crosses to Yinsen. Tony makes a strangled noise of protest, but the seven guns trained on him cock in response and he bites his tongue. The man forces Yinsen, who knows better than to protest, down on his knees. He shoves Yinsen’s head so that it rests on Tony’s anvil. The man brings the ember close to Yinsen’s mouth and begins shouting at him in a dialect Tony doesn’t recognize. Yinsen responds with stoic timidity, and Tony barely catches the word “Jericho” at the end of the sentence. The man repeats his question, louder, and Yinsen responds exactly the same. He repeats it one more time, roaring at him, before angrily barking at another soldier, who rushes forward and squeezes Yinsen’s cheeks, forcing his mouth open.

“What does he want?” Tony bursts out, his blood boiling. He ignores the shouts and approaching guns, fiercely staring down the leader. “What do you want? A delivery date?”

The man glares at Tony, the fiery ember still hovering less than an inch away from Yinsen’s open mouth. Tony pauses, recovering his composure, staring at Yinsen.

“I need him,” he forces out. “Good assistant.”

The leader drops the ember on the anvil and the soldier releases Yinsen, who collapses with a shaky sigh. The man comes up against Tony, glowering at him cruelly. “You have until tomorrow to assemble my missile.”

✯✯✯

“Say it again.”

“41 steps straight ahead. Then 16 steps, that’s from the door, fork right, 33 steps, turn right.”

The iron suit is now being fitted around Tony’s body, Yinsen hurriedly fastening bolts and screwing attachments together as Tony repeats the plan of escape. Last night’s work had been the fastest, crudest, and most desperate fifteen hours of Tony’s life. It had taken even more brainpower to work out a way to wiggle Tony into the mass of metal without the cameras in the cave giving them away. But now Yinsen alternates between their open laptop and Tony, who is currently incapacitated in a half-baked suit and hidden from camera view by an upturned table.

“ _Yinsen!_ ” The surgeon jumps when they hear men shouting from further through the tunnels. “ _Yinsen! Stark!_ ”

“Say something,” Tony hisses as the men continue yelling. “Say something back to him.”

“He’s speaking Hungarian. I don’t-”

“Then speak Hungarian.”

Yinsen sputters out something in response, and Harrison tries to peek through a crack in the cave door. Julia paces back and forth, biting her nails. Penny refuses to leave Tony’s side, overseeing the finishing touches on Tony’s armor. Milo is on the verge of delirium.

“Oh my god, if I weren’t dead I would be pissing myself right now,” he whispers, running his hands through his hair.

“That worked all right,” Yinsen mutters as the voices from outside seem to fade for the time being, and returns to his work on Tony. “Let me finish this.”

“Initialize the power sequence.”

“Okay-”

“Now!”

Yinsen rushes to the laptop. “Tell me, tell me!”

“Function 11. Tell me when you see a progress bar.” Tony barely waits for the briefest moment, his panic taking control of his nerves. “It should be up right now!”

“Yes.”

“ _Talk to me._ Tell me when you see it.”

“I have it.”

“Press Control ‘I’. ‘I’. ‘Enter’. ‘I’ and ‘Enter’,” Tony commands, as if repeating the computer programs is somehow soothing to his soul in this present turmoil. “Come over here and button me up.”

“They’ve got to have noticed Tony’s been out of camera view for a long while now,” Julia bursts, wringing her hands.

“I hear them,” Harrison announces, his eyes wide with terror. “Oh my god, I hear them.”

Yinsen hears their boots echoing down the cave too, glancing frantically between his work and the door.

“Every other hex bolt,” Tony reminds him.

“They’re coming.”

“Nothing pretty, just get it done. Just get it done.”

“They’re _coming!_ ”

“Make sure the checkpoints are clear before you follow me out, okay?” Tony checks, staring at Yinsen, but the surgeon suddenly won’t make eye contact. He’s glancing between the progress bar on the laptop and the voices coming from the door, something dawning in his eyes.

“We need more time.”

Tony’s heart stops. “Hey-”

Yinsen looks Tony in the eye, placing a hand over the arc reactor. “I’m gonna go buy you some time.” He runs off in the direction of the door.

“Stick to the plan!” Tony yells, suddenly feeling the suffocating dread of being alone wrap its thick fingers around his neck. “Stick to the plan -- Yinsen! _Yinsen!_ ”

Julia and Harrison try to stop Yinsen as he rushes out the cave door, but their grasping hands pass through him without resistance and their tether stops them from following him. They watch as Yinsen snatches a gun from a nearby rack and yells as he fires it continuously into the tunnel before him.

Alone, cocooned in the recycled scraps of his father’s company’s weapons, Tony gapes helplessly as the progress bar creeps across the laptop screen. The shouting voices draw nearer, and the lights in the cave flicker and go out as all the power in the room is subverted into the suit.

When the lights cut, the ghosts rush to Tony and huddle around him. His iron shell creaks with the slightest movement and his shaky breathing is so loud they are sure he’ll give himself away.

“No worries, baby, I’m right here,” Penny whispers to him. “We’re right here beside you, baby. We’re right here.”

Miraculously, Tony somehow finds control of his breathing. Furrowing his brow, he steels himself as the first wave of soldiers bursts through the door.

“ _Stark! ...Stark!_ ”

The next few minutes are a blur. Tony deflects the bullets raining down on him with the reinforced steel of his suit while the terrorists scream and drop like flies. After they see him torch a guy who was unfortunate enough to get in his way, they retreat back to the main cave. They don’t make it very far, and Tony, the narrow eye slits allowing him to see only flashes of blood and fire and faces from within the impenetrable suit, tramps on -- not hesitating to mow down any man in his path.

After the barricade of soldiers has been eliminated, Tony enters a larger room of the cave, the entrance to the labyrinth visible just a hundred yards away, where bright sunlight seeps in welcomingly. Tony takes one step before noticing a limp body lying on a pile of supplies. It takes him a moment to realize the body is Yinsen.

“Yinsen!”

“Watch out!” The surgeon calls weakly, and Tony turns his head to see the leader approaching him with a large gun from the other corner of the cave. Tony lifts his arm and blasts him with flame, sending him flying backwards with an explosion of his own weapon.

His movements clunky, Tony rushes to Yinsen, lifting up the metal mask to see him better. With a stabbing start, he notices the deep, dark bloodstains that have pooled over his front.

“Oh, no,” Penny breathes. “Yinsen…”

“Stark,” he whispers hoarsely, a slight smile on his face.

“Come on. We gotta go,” Tony insists, attempting to take Yinsen’s hand, but the surgeon shakes his head. “Move for me, come on. We got a plan. We’re gonna stick to it.”

Yinsen, too quiet, too calm, still declines. “This was always the plan, Stark.”

Tony wonders if his arc reactor has given out, because it feels like the shrapnel has found his heart and is eating it into shreds. “Come on, you’re gonna go see your family. Get up.”

“My family is dead. I’m going to go see them now, Stark.”

Tony’s hand drops to his side. Harrison and Julia glance at each other, Penny lets out a shaky breath, and Milo has to cover his mouth with his hand. Yinsen recognizes the heartbreak and denial in Tony’s eyes and smiles weakly.

“It’s okay. I want this. I want this.” His voice becomes weaker with every word and Tony finds himself on the brink of tears for the first time in, perhaps, decades.

“Thank you for saving me.”

“Don’t waste it,” he murmurs, his kind eyes closing for the last time. “Don’t waste your life.”

Tony stands frozen for several seconds, his ironclad hand resting on Yinsen’s still chest, but the ghosts watch in awe as they witness something incredible happen. Much like when they floated out of the fallen bus, they watch as another Yinsen floats softly out of the body lying on the supplies. This Yinsen -- or, his soul, or what have you -- glances about in awed confusion as he takes in Tony staring at his dead body and then, crazily, makes eye contact with the four other invisible people standing beside him. The initial perplexedness passes quickly, before he nods to the four ghosts with a startled laugh.

“Why, hello.”

“Thank you so much for saving our boy,” Penny moans tearfully, rushing forward and wrapping her arms around him. Yinsen returns the hug gently, glancing between the other three ghosts with a somehow understanding smile.

When Penny pulls away, he glances at Tony, who has turned from the body and now faces the cave’s mouth coldly. He nods his head toward him. “You take care of that man.” He begins to float upwards uncontrollably, and waving, calls out one more thing before disappearing into the cave ceiling and beyond: “He has a good heart.”

Tony, meanwhile, stands in the sunlight, independent, for the first time in three months. His eyes are firm and his mouth is hardened, but deep inside his chest, something warm is beating wildly that hasn’t been awake since he was seven years old. He pulls the iron mask over his face and steps outside.

His ghosts are right behind him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Research. All I can say. Here's a note from our doc when we were writing about the palladium:  
> "i did the math -- if there's .15 grams palladium in each rocket and there are 11 more rockets, that totals out to 1.65 grams of palladium which is just enough! but then i realized he said the OTHEr 11 so he already broke down the 12th so in actuality they have 1.8 grams palladium total which is good news for them
> 
> "this is literally the most useless research ive ever done"
> 
> Sorry for the wait, but hopefully that chapter was a good make-up? :)

**Author's Note:**

> Comment what you think, or leave constructive criticism? We will be making the story more our own, but the beginning of the movie is really too perfect not to write. Have any of you seen the movie? What do you think of this?
> 
> (Movie is Heart and Souls (1993) like it says in the fandom tag)


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